“Though I had mayde the pact with the Lorde of the Great Abyss and knew this being would visit, I could not have been prepared for its majesty. Its skin all over midnight black, it towered over me, wielding the great trident. In my mind was spoken a demand for the reason I had summoned it.”

Reanimatrix is the third in a series of books written by Peter Rawlik that focuses on a world that Peter has built out of H.P. Lovecraft’s works focused around the story Herbert West: Reanimator. In the previous stories in Rawlik’s world, he’s introduced his own reanimators and several other characters, but weaves them into the Lovecraft mythos flawlessly so that you can see exactly where these characters are even when you’re just reading Lovecraft’s stories. He fills the gaps, so to say, and he’s very good at it.

I have written a ton of stuff for my home game and convention scenarios over the years prior to 7th ed. Due to this I still write in 6th ed language, which I realize confuses those who came on board after the onset of 7th ed. Welcome aboard, by the way.

While I realize I should convert, which I shall eventually, there is a handy conversion guide on p. 390 of the 7th ed. rulebook.

“As I stared into the open mass grave–filled with our men, women and children–my despair overcame the revulsion of the horrific stench. Slowly, my despair devolved into seething rage and a desperate need for justice. God had turned his back on us, so I called out into the universe for any who would provide retribution. The thousands of flies which crawled upon our people swarmed upward, swirling into a black mass which settled into the form of a man from whom I felt an ancient and terrible consciousness. My initial horror slowly bled into a sick form of worship as I realized this being, this god, would gratify my lust for vengeance.”

Fly man will manifest only in the presence of someone who is in blind rage of unjust, large scale killing and of the dead themselves, who must be swarming with flies.

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“Me and Luke was out checkin’ our mud bug traps and I heered splashin’ comin’ toward me. Luke started screamin’ sumpin’ awful. I looked over and there he was, all white in the moonlight and his skin wrigglin’. It was Missa Grits alright. Poor ol’ Luke tried to run and slipped. Missa Grits grabbed ‘im up and just kinda melted all over ‘im. I ain’t never been so scared in all my life. I turn and run, got to the truck and drove like hell outta there.”

Mr. Grits is a manifestation of the rage, fear and torment of all who have been raped, tortured and murdered in the local swamps, or who have been killed elsewhere and dumped here.

“The boy was naked and shivering. He said he was lost and wanted to find his family. I moved closer to help him and, as he reached toward me, I saw that his spine was rooted directly into the base of the huge and twisted tree. His eyes darkened and his mouth split into a gruesome smile of spiked teeth. A cold, black and bitter-tasting rain began to fall, running down my face into my mouth.”

–“D,” agent of the Top Secret Project Catalyst, whereabouts undisclosed.

He’s still reading his science fiction novels, working the jobs only an ex-boxer can get, and working on a correspondence course in investigations that has me super excited for future installments.

In this book, he’s investigating a weird type of meteorite that might have abstract properties, making it dangerous for the owner.

My favorite parts of this book were the parts that define any Harry Stubbs adventure. Specifically, the investigation into the museum, the library research, and the very interesting characters, specifically, his employer in this book and the sultry American visitor.

Harry Stubbs is one of my favorite characters and always a great adventure. David fails to disappoint, bringing an intelligent and intrigue-driven story to a character that could so easily be written as a dumb stereotype. Instead, he’s a smart man, who I would describe as more wise than intelligent, in that he’s always seeking to learn and better himself.

Even if those efforts and his current line of work might drive him mad.
5 out of 5!

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With Peele of Key & Peele/Get Out fame creating an HBO exclusive miniseries based off Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft country, we decided it is a great opportunity to review the book here. Lovecraft Country follows the adventures of a black family from Chicago during the height of Jim Crow through an interconnected anthology, with each story building on the previous and working together beautifully. In the book, Lovecraft himself is a known author, so we depart from the standard Mythos that we see in most Cthulhu Mythos stories, akin to the way Charles Stross openly mocks Lovecraft in his short story Equoid. That said, however, the stories are in fact quite Lovecraftian.